AT&T looking to acquire DirecTV for $50 billion, deal could be announced in days

AT&T is looking at inking a bid to take DirecTV into the fold and the deal may be announced within the next two weeks. Based on the stock valuation of DirecTV, in the low-to-mid $90-per-share range, that will cost the carrier as much as $50 billion.

AT&T would front the deal mostly with stock, which avoids excess debt, but increases its dividend payouts over time. The money gurus are apparently working to find the right balance of cash, debt and stock to make the deal work.

DirecTV has been the apple of someone else’s eye, such as Charles Ergen of Dish Network. However, Dish was thwarted by regulators once before in an attempt to merge with DirecTV, and even if he thought Dish could be a player this time around, Ergen has already said the company doesn’t have the cash to get into a bidding war with AT&T.

This is not the first time AT&T and DirecTV have tried to tie the knot either. Previous attempts to score a deal were scuttled when the two parties could not come to terms of pricing and other issues.

What will AT&T do with DirecTV? Well, the carrier already sells DirecTV service as an agent, and bundles DirecTV with other offerings as a value add to customers. It looks like AT&T will use this to augment the U-Verse service, free up facilities based bandwidth and use the DirecTV for the video portion of the package.

AT&T’s U-Verse offers allow the ability to program and view your favorite entertainment on your mobile phone or tablet, a feature we trust would not suffer adversely by whatever deal that may, or may not, be announced.

2.Mxyzptlk (unregistered)

I think ATT got wind of Ergen's clever plan to merge Deep Dish with nTacos, cornering two of the most popular food choices in America, the pizza and the taco, and forming a synergy of fast and delicious food products and satellite TV.

Soon we will discover ATT's plan. After they get their own satellite TV, ATT will buy Kentucky Fried Chicken. Then ATT will be able to offer DirecKFC, a compelling alternative to pizza and tacos.

These are exciting times, no doubt. Soon Americans will be able to save time and make their lives simpler and more enjoyable through truly world class one stop shopping.

And with the FCC's help, ATT will be able to offer DirecTV channels online as "fast lane" content, thus basically trying to turn the internet into the next Cable TV platform where you pay by the channel, or by the site in this case.

The FCC is paving the way in collusion with cable companies and ISPs folks, beware...

RIght you are. The inevitable road ahead of us. Some might call this nothing more than inescapable iterations of the "Doom Loop of Oligarchy": wealth buys power, which buys more wealth, etc.

"Thomas Piketty argues that capitalism, left unchecked, subverts democracy by always and everywhere concentrating wealth at the tippy-top. That creates a class with so much economic power that they begin wielding tremendous political power, too. And then they use that political power to further increase their wealth, and then they use that wealth to further increase their political power, and so on."

One might as well say that government subverts capitalism, since it's venal and corrupt by definition, thus always open to selling its monopoly on force to coerce us the people to buy whatever benefits its paymasters.

It would be good if cable companies decided to offer their network as channels online. That'd actually be cool. It would be bad if ISPs started modeling the internet after the cable model and sold access to chunks of the internet at a time, rather than the whole internet.

They would argue that you get access to premium content this way, but the unspoken corollary is that you actually get denied access to content you don't specifically subscribe to.

Oh please no! Recently switch from Comcast to AT&T and their internet is still garbage. Plus AT&T is one of the 5 US ISPs that Level 3 Communications notes is throttling user speeds when we stream Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. The last thing they need is more control of anything.

I've been very vocal on where I stand with Monopolies. This is getting out of control. We are facing a dystopian presence here. Hold on to your cash people. The government has no intentions of holding AT&T or Verizon back from maintaining a cartel in duopolization.

AT&T is back and stronger than it was before its break up. So much for protecting consumer advocacy and choice.

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